Podcast

Interested in a career abroad? An MBA in international management could be your best bet. You’ll gain foreign language skills, be exposed to a culturally broad curriculum and make worldwide contacts. We’ll explore some global career opportunities and look into a U.S.-based global MBA programs.

Guests Include:

Beth Miertschin, Director of Career Advising & Education, Thunderbird School of International Management

I-wei Niu, Second Year student at Thunderbird School of International Management

Tonio Palmer, Director of Language Programs, Marketing, and Recruiting, The Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies, The Wharton School

Do you want to have a career in Asia’s booming economy? Or have you considered tapping into the European market place? Well, today couldn’t be a better time to go abroad. Opportunity knocks in every corner of the world and if you want to get a slice of the global pie, then getting an MBA in international management could be the way to go. Not only will you be exposed to a culturally broad curriculum, you’ll make worldwide contacts. This time we’ll explore some international career opportunities and look into a couple US based MBA programs. We’ll talk to a director of career services, an international MBA program director, a current student and a global recruiter.

To give you an idea of why someone would choose a global MBA program over others, let’s meet I-wei Niu, she’s a second year student at the Thunderbird School of International Management. She was born in Canada but grew up in Singapore and Malaysia. She studied abroad in Japan and Hong Kong, after graduating from university I-wei joined Proctor and Gamble and worked as a brand manager for a couple of years. “At that point they were going through some restructuring and I decided it was time for me to leave the company and I’ve always wanted to go to Asia so I thought instead of waiting for the company to take me there, with all of the restructuring, I would leave and go. So I took off and traveled for a bit and I ended up in Beijing, China with a backpack knowing that I wanted to stay and just kind of started looking for a job and it was just, just the way things sort of happened. I was very very fortunate and landed with a great opportunity to work for a fashion company and they really needed someone with marketing skills to help them build the marketing department.” Well I-wei clearly shows a path to a global career, not all students that go to Thunderbird have such extensive international work experience says Beth Miertschin, Director of Career Advising and Education, “Almost every single one has international experience maybe with the Peace Corp or having lived abroad or maybe studying for a significant amount of time at an international university, doing international missions with a church, so every, almost every student has some significant international background.” Thunderbird offers a MBA degree in International Management, Miertschin says you’ll learn all the typical business skills that MBA programs provide. “The difference is that Thunderbird really emphasizes that application of those skills in a global or international environment. So our course work, take finance, for example and which is kind of a very typical MBA business field and talks about how that works internationally and applies it to different economies and different cultures and the cultural and international market piece is a part of every single class.”

Tonio Palmer is Director of Language Programs, Marketing and Recruiting at the Wharton School’s Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies. Through the Lauder program, you’ll earn a Wharton MBA and the Master’s in International Studies. Palmer says it’s a two year program, “It starts in early May and Wharton starts in early August, so it’s about three months longer. And they’ll spend a month on campus here and then go for two months to a very intense emersion that we organize in each of the countries, specifically for our students where they study the language very intensely but also visit companies, go on cultural excursions and attend lecture series and things like that.”

Often times international degree programs have language requirements. Thunderbird requires students to achieve business proficiency in a foreign language by graduation. Though many students are already multi-lingual; its student body represents 49 different countries that speak some 57 languages. At the Lauder Institute, Palmer says they have eight language tracks, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. “You need to come with a relatively strong foundation in one of those eight languages. There are a few exceptions, but generally we look to admit people at what we call advance level which is an official designation and we graduate them as a superior. And if you know language study superior is where you can negotiate in the language, where you can use a subjunctive if you’re using romance language, things like that, have a relatively broad vocabulary and can really go to the country and work full-time in the language.”

“Clearly, today is really there’s almost no business that isn’t impacted by things going on around the world and I’m certainly not the first person to say that. And I think by studying other cultures, understanding how business is done in other regions, you gain a perspective to see how different things can be done and how you have to fit whatever you’re doing into the whole world. At the moment obviously China is having a huge impact on business, from sucking up resources, to being a place where things can be manufactured. And you can be in very local industries that are extremely impacted by what’s going on in China.”

I-wei Niu is considering going back to China. She says she has a job offer in Shanghai. China’s pace and exponential growth is appealing she says and it’s one country in need of MBAs. “You can’t go one day without reading something about China in the news these days and how the, I mean the market is just growing so fast and so much is happening there that they really need a lot of talent to help them develop, so to speak. There’s a lot of push with multi-national companies to train and develop local talent within China. But what they’re finding out, I think in recent years, is there’s somewhat of a gap in middle management where they’re finding that you know they really need a little bit more sort of creative, innovative, break through thinking. Most of the work being done in emersion markets is to reapply models from develop markets. Of course you have to, you know, customize it for the emerging market. But someone who has experience in both and being able to bridge, really truly act as a bridge, not just language abilities but really the understanding of cultures, the understanding of how to take advantage of the opportunities between the developed markets versus the emerging market, those are the skills that they’re looking for.” As I-wei just said, understanding culture is an important part of doing business, so at Lauder, Palmer says they’ve incorporated lessons in culture into the program. “We look at objectively how culture impacts business decisions and the way people react. So it’s a more studied approach to interactions and inter-human interactions in doing business school globally. You might do a semester, some schools send you abroad and do a semester abroad, maybe two to Japan or something but you will study there but you may not really focus on, for example, how to properly give gifts and when can you do that and what’s a bribe and what’s considered appropriate. You may learn by trial and error but we really talk about those things in specific and so people can know how to approach something like that which in the US culture is done very differently, I mean basically every culture has it’s own approach to something like gift giving. And you can make some terrible mistakes if you don’t consciously know what’s going on.”

International careers can vary widely. Palmer says many Lauder graduates go into investment banking, finance and consulting. “Where a straight Wharton student might go to McKenzie in Boston or New York, our students will go to Brussels or to Hong Kong or something like that more typically, but not necessarily. And then product companies, I would say is probably the third largest career where people wilI go into global product management or start here and then go over seas or the other way around.”

Johnson and Johnson recruits out of 56 universities around the world, including Thunderbird and Lauder, this year they interviewed for some 280 positions in 42 countries. Niel Currie is Johnson and Johnson’s Manager of Global University Recruitment, he hires for positions in Latin American companies, including Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala. Currie says he’s currently looking for someone to work in Brazil as a customer manager, to deal with major business partners like Wal-Mart and large local chains. “We’re looking for people who are able to deal with the complexities of business on a global basis. We’re looking for people who have demonstrated leadership in their professional as well as their personal lives and the criteria that we use for selection; there are actually 10 different characteristics that we look for. First and foremost it’s integrity and the ability to make ethical based decisions and that is someone who can build trust through their actions as well as their words. The next one I can think of is strategic thinking, in this particular position that I’m referring to really puts you in the position of playing the role of the strategic thinker for your partners as well as for all of the consumer products franchise leaders in the business. And that puts you in a position of being often on your distributors, on your major customers side rather than on your product manager’s side which leads to the next characteristic which is the ability to develop cooperative relationships with people, inside and outside of the company and to be team player. There is for this particular position a very high level of need to have a sense of urgency, to act proactively, to respond to and to actually to try to predict problems and see opportunities. What we find with the MBAs who have studied outside of their home countries, they can usually see opportunities where others in their local environment might not. It also requires a good degree of self awareness and adaptability; most of our positions in the economies outside of the US require a great deal of adaptability and flexibility. The last one for all of Johnson and Johnson is to have a very strong results orientation and to be performance driven.”

Currie says Johnson and Johnson hires candidates that are authorized to work in the country where the job is located and salaries aren’t comparable to typical US MBA salaries, “The salaries are driven by the local market, there is not a MBA salary in most of the markets outside of the US. So it really will depend upon the position that I’m recruiting for, the experience of the candidate and the school will not play a big role in the base salary, but it will play a role in the incentives which we include in the offer such as the joining incentive. The Japanese, for example, most of the opportunities that we have in Japan if you convert them into US dollars are, salaries in Tokyo are generally better than the average salaries in the US. The region that I work in, none of the countries have salaries which are converted into US dollars compared to US compensation on a gross comp level but the basic philosophy of our employment is local jobs and local employment, it’s not even fair to compare a salary in pesos to a salary in dollars.” Currie says they do hire career switchers and also consider those with little experience in the field. “The program that I manage is really not for filling specific jobs, although we have to start with a specific job, it’s really not to fill that job, it’s to fill what we call a leadership pipeline in the company. And some of our best talent is hired through the program. They’re given; in many cases they’re given training outside of the hiring company for as much as year.”

Working in an emerging market like countries in Latin America and China will require different skills and will offer a different experience says I-wei Niu, “What I found is in the emerging market; you know things are moving at a really fast pace. It’s really exciting, I mean, I realize after doing internships both in you know the US and the Middle East, it just sort of you know answered the question for me that I’m much more of an emerging market kind of person. So it really leverages all your skills, you’re asked to be sort of a general manager as opposed to a specialist. Most of the roles in companies that have offices in emerging markets, require the people there to take on several roles at one time and things are moving fast so your know your growth tejectury is really steep but you also get a huge amount of responsibility compared to say working in the US or Canada. And most people that I’ve talked to after they’ve graduated for a few years and even my personal experience, I’ve found that my career has accelerated, probably I would say, you know twice, or even I’ve been able to shave off two to three years of my career in being able to progress quickly.”

Visa issues will likely come up if you’re looking to work abroad. While some international companies will sponsor your visa, other companies like Johnson and Johnson may require that you can legally work in a particular country before being hired. I-wei says, don’t be turned off right away by work authorization requirements, “It’s tough because you know, we all have country affiliations, we all have our citizenships and you know I think these days borders are starting to open but it’s also you know you can’t underestimate the whole visa issue, working visa, do you have work authorization here, do you have work authorization there? And I think companies are just slowly coming around and looking at talent in general and finding a way to fit them into the organization, especially fluid talent that are looking at an international career and not necessarily fit in any specific geographical region. But one thing for students who have a varied background and may need sponsorship or may bump into work authorization or visa issues is you know, persistence and don’t take no for an answer. If you’re truly interested and if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, things will happen and that has happened to me many times so you know I can totally attest to that and that’s what I keep telling my classmates who run into issues like that.”

If you’d like to get a MBA in global management, Lauder Institute’s Tonio Palmer says start by gaining some international experiences. “I would strongly encourage them to learn a language, if they haven’t started to start. To try and find a job that exposes them to international business, so not to work at the local you know in a local retail store, something like that but try and find something that exposes them to dealing with people from other countries, Even if it’s in English that’s a wonderful experience. And ideally find a way to get themselves overseas for at least six months to a year. I think there’s nothing like living in another country and then looking back at the US and how other cultures and other people perceive the US to get a real understanding of the importance of that. If you grow up in the States and never leave, you do have a tendency to think that we’re in the center of the universe but if you get some time in another country you realize that that’s not really true.”

For more information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA Podcaster visit MBApodcaster.com, I’m Janet Nakano and this is MBA Podcaster. Thanks for listening. And next time we’ll be giving out advice to young MBA applicants.

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MBA Podcaster is your online source for information, insight, and advice on the MBA admission process. We deliver relevant information and advice through biweekly audio segments for those planning to apply for a Master in Business Administration. Topics include everything from a behind-the-scenes view of the admission process to post-MBA job opportunities and current market trends. Guests include Deans of various business schools, alumni, corporate recruiters, MBA consultants and more. On each segment we go in-depth on a particular topic of interest to an MBA applicant and interview relevant experts to help make your application process more efficient and successful. Listen for this week’s newest topic or browse our archive for the specific information you need to know. Drop us a line and tell us what you’d like to hear: info@mbapodcaster.com